John Jay alum offered coveted federal grant

Young activist treats HIV-infected mothers in South Africa

12:17 PM,
Jun. 21, 2012

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Jamie Cohen's decision to put her purpose and her passion into South Africa, where AIDS remains a crisis, started with her first experience seeing desperately poor people in Vietnam and Thailand as an elementary school girl living with her parents in Tokyo.

But Cohen's decision to make HIV treatment in sub-Saharan Africa her professional focus didn't start until a trip in college to Zambia, where she worked on restructuring the country's health care policy and discovered a convergence of her zeal and her skills.

"I am definitely driven by something more than a career," says Cohen, 23, who ...